Tentative answer on Mill - for Nikhil

1. Mill, like Madison and others, worries about  the ‘tyranny of the majority’.  How do they differ?

Mill and Madison both understand the tyranny of the majority broadly as the capacity for the majority of people in a society to dictate laws according to their interests, fettering or preventing the development of individuality. Whereas Madison approaches it through the discussion of factions as clustered groups of interest that determine most political outcomes, Mill notes that the majority develops either through numerical majority or through that group of people which is most active and succeeds in making themselves accepted as the dominant interest group. Madison can be seen to offer a similar idea in that there exist some "permanent minorities" along lines of race, ethnicity, etc. which fail to represent the dominant interest even when they are in numerical majority in a given community. While Madison suggests that politically dividing society into smaller groups to prevent the rise of factions succeeds in preventing the tyranny of the majority, Mill analyzes this from a more individual framework, arguing that the tyranny of the majority is prevented when individuals consciously make decisions not to align with the majority or to invoke their prejudices, but out of their own individual opinions. He goes on to say, people "have occupied themselves rather in inquiring what society ought to like or dislike, than in questioning whether its likings or dislikings should be a law to individuals." Broadly, the greater interest of the individual for Mill is thus to be able to exercise its opinion over both the governing agency and, consequentially, the power of the majority.